McCAUSLAND'S AMMUNITION.
It is no wonder at all that Emily Barlow should have come to regard
Inspector McCausland as the villain of the drama in which she was taking
a part. Although whenever she tried to formulate his theory of the case
it seemed to her too frail to hang a kitten by, yet she had moments of
doubt in which his great reputation and clean record of victories
oppressed and appalled her. And these moments were rendered frequent by
a quality which McCausland seemed to possess in common with other
satanic characters, his ubiquity, in which he was only surpassed by Mr.
Arthur Kennedy Foxhall. In justice to McCausland, however, it should be
stated that he did not make a practice, as the manikin did, of writing
bi-weekly billet-doux.
The first time the detective's shadow fell across Emily's path--after
her discovery of his identity--was on one of her visits to Senda Wesner.
Who should be coming out of the bakeshop but chubby Richard in person?
His bow was gallant and his smile serene.
"My weekly call," he said, stopping to chat for a moment. "A sociable
little magpie, that one," jerking his thumb toward the bakeshop girl.
Emily thought this uncomplimentary. From Miss Wesner she gathered enough
to lead her to suspect that he was trying to connect the peddler in the
green cart, who was certainly no peddler and who had eluded all pursuit
thus far, with the slamming of the rear door, which must have been done
by some one else than Floyd.
A few days later she had called at the office of the Beacon, the
newspaper for which Robert wrote special articles, to obtain some papers
from his desk. The desk was indeed there, but all its drawers had been
removed and the managing editor explained that they might be found at
the office of Inspector McCausland.
Twice she had met the inspector climbing Shagarach's stairs, but passing
by the lawyer's door and mounting to the top story. The second time she
had heard his voice in conference with a throaty falsetto she thought
she knew, and the black mask of Pineapple Jupiter, appearing at the head
of the stairs, confirmed her suspicions. Without scruple she entered the
mission herself one day and expended all her arts to pump the old negro.
The moment McCausland's name was introduced, however, his loquacity was
checked of a sudden, then took dizzy flights of irrelevance.
"Oh, dese chillun, chillun," cried Jupiter, puttering away at a broken
pane, "dey done gone break my winders."
"The stout, ruddy gentleman, I mean," persisted Emily, but Jupiter was
so absorbed in his hymn tune that he did not hear her.
Sharper heads than Emily's had failed to force McCausland's hand when he
chose to shut it tight. The newspaper reporters, whom no ordinary walls
can bar, had bestirred themselves to secure for an inquisitive public
the "new evidence" that the government had presented before the grand
jury in the Floyd case, but absolutely without avail. Where such
experienced allies owned themselves beaten, the gentle maiden might
surely do so without dishonor.
As Shagarach foretold, Bertha had been spirited away. Mrs. Christenson,
the intelligence offices, the Swedish consul, the Lutheran pastor, were
all visited and revisited by Emily, especially since the new inspiration
seized her, but none of them knew the address of the housemaid since she
left Hillsborough that morning on an outward-bound train. The only rumor
of her whereabouts was that vague report, coming from the bakeshop girl,
which Dr. Silsby had set out to investigate.
With regard to the Arnolds' coachman, who had driven their carriage on
the day of the fire, Emily considered Shagarach to be curiously
indifferent. He had promised to subpoena the man for the trial, but that
was all. Yet his testimony was crucial, since he must know whether Harry
was with his mother in the vehicle.
This was a peculiarity of Shagarach's, in which he differed again from
McCausland. Though he prepared his defense with consummate painstaking,
when it came his turn to prosecute an unwilling witness, he seemed
satisfied to know the truth in his own mind, relying upon his genius to
extort a confession during the cross-examination. With a perjurer before
him he wielded the lash like a slave-driver, and perhaps he was
justified in this case in omitting a rehearsal which would only put the
Arnolds on their guard.
But Emily's greatest disappointment came in what seemed to her the one
weak point of Robert's defense, the axis around which the entire
prosecution revolved. Time and again she had conferred with Shagarach on
the subject of her lover's reverie after the deed. To think that he
could not remember a face he had seen, an incident, a word spoken,
during those four hours--nothing but a vague itinerary of the afternoon,
which came out with difficulty each time, and the course of his own
meditations, which, to tell the truth, was clear and copious enough, but
worthless for the purpose.
At her last visit to the lawyer's home he had entered into this more
deeply. Apparently the method of attacking the enigma, which he had
hinted at possessing from the very first, was now ripened. For he loaned
Emily a ponderous volume on "Diseases of the Memory," and asked her to
bring in all the evidence possible showing the mutual affection of
nephew and uncle, not failing to wear the water lily from time to time,
as he had suggested before. But she was not satisfied with this, and,
knowing Robert had visited the park, spent one whole Sunday making a
tour of that district, questioning each of the gray-coated policemen.
At last she had found an officer who recollected "something of such a
young man as she described." He "couldn't swear to it," but "had an
idea he noticed him." In fact, his recollection grew vaguer and vaguer
the more they tried to make it specific, and to Emily's chagrin, when
they brought him to the jail, he asserted positively that Robert was not
the man. This disappointment was sharpened tenfold by her meeting
Inspector McCausland, passing out of the corridor, arm in arm with a car
conductor.
"I am certain that was my passenger," the conductor was saying. To have
her own failure and McCausland's success thus brought into contact
accentuated both and gave Emily a miserable day.
The case of the old chemist was not so bad, and besides, was none of
Emily's doing. John Davidson, the marshal, had taken up Shagarach's
theory of Harry Arnold's guilt with remarkable zeal and had borrowed one
of the photographs, so as to see if he could be of use. One day he came
in, greatly excited, and asked for the lawyer.
"Got some evidence that'll surprise you, brother," said the marshal.
"Then it must be extraordinary," answered Shagarach.
"What do you think that young rascal did?"
"Who?"
"Arnold. Went to a chemist, a friend of mine, fellow-townsman, too,
Phineas Fowler, and bought a big heap of combustible powder, a day or
two before the fire. Sprinkled it over the whole room, probably."
"He wasn't so foolish as to leave his name, however?"
"Oh, Phineas knew the photograph. Spotted him right away when I fetched
her out. Lucky I took it now, wan't it? 'That's the man,' says Phineas."
"I believe I have your friend's address already," said Shagarach, and in
two or three days he was paying a long-delayed visit to Phineas Fowler.
Amid the compound odor of chemicals sat a shriveled pantaloon, with a
long, thin beard whose two forks he kept pulling and stroking. Shagarach
was about to state his business, when a stranger at the window came
forward and interrupted him.
"The young man who bought the combustion powder was identified in jail
yesterday," said Inspector McCausland, smiling. "It was only Floyd, on
that matter of the bomb."
That matter of the bomb! Perhaps it would be harder to explain than
Emily thought.
But McCausland was not always out beating the bush for evidence.
Occasionally the mountain went to Mahomet. The reward of $5,000, which
Harry Arnold had advertised, drew a dribbling stream of callers to the
inspector's office. There was the veiled lady, who had seen the crime
with the eyes of her soul, and would accept a small fee for a
clairvoyant seance, and the lady with green glasses, whose card
announced her as "Phoebe Isinglass, metaphysician." The moderation of
her terms could only be accounted for by her scientific interest in the
matter. She asked only $1,000 if she proved Floyd insane, $500 if she
proved him sane, and $100 (merely as a compensation for her time) if the
case baffled her skill.
Prof. I. Noah Little, the conchologist, paid McCausland the honor of a
call and even brought his whelk-shell with him. With this occult
instrument at his ear he had been known to make the most remarkable
prophecies, declaring to gullible girls the names of their future
spouses, and even portending the great snowfall of May 21 in the year
1880.
As for suggestions by mail, the office porter's spine grew bent with
emptying the waste-basket which received them. Hypnotism was the
favorite explanation with a large majority of the correspondents,
followed by a somnambulism and various ingenious theories of accident.
The pope and the czar were named as authors, and the freemasons were
accused in one epistle of a plot to burn up the ocean with some
diabolical explosive, to procure which they had all sold their souls to
the devil, though what this had to do with the Floyd case was a greater
mystery than the fire itself.
Out of all this chaff the inspector sifted a solitary grain. One morning
he was joking in the office with Hardy, Johnson and Smith, three of his
brothers-in-buttons. Hardy handled sneak-thieves and shoplifters,
Johnson swindlers of a higher order, such as confidence men, and Smith
the gangs of forgers and counterfeiters. They were all, like McCausland,
common-looking men. This enabled them to slouch through life quietly,
taking observations by the way.
"Well, Dick," said Johnson, "I hear you've been appointed
confessor-general to Col. Mainwaring's sinners."
This was received with a hearty laugh, for they were a jolly four, these
men of iron.
"That arson case is a puzzler," put in Smith. "Why didn't you send a
bottle of the smoke to Sherlock Holmes?"
"With a blank label," added Johnson, "for the incendiary's name."
"Would he notice such an A B C riddle?" laughed Hardy.
"A lady for Mr. McCausland," announced the mulatto policeman, and the
brothers-in-buttons quickly found other business.